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'd 651 
■03 04 
1919 

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KINGDOM OF THE 

SERBS, CROATS AND SLOVENES: 

OFFICIAL INFORMATION BUREAU 

WASHINGTON 



Voyclav M. Yovanovitch, 
Director, 



52 4 .Southern ."BuiD.ding^ 
Telephone: Franklin 6722, 



MMOEAMDUJi 



ON THE 



• DAD^AT IAN OUF STION. -.•-••--..■. . • . 

PP^RTTNTtTD TO 'm'^ •PTAC^ COMFFRFNCE IN vppiS BY THE DELEGATION OF THE 
KINGDOM OF ^-^BS, CROATS AND SLO'VENES^ 



I. - Gec^a-ptiical Arg:uments, 
Dalrcatia has no natural frontiers. It is not a geographical unity 
which has alvvays been contained within the same boundaries, but a creation 
of history, having had during various epochs different frontiers. Roman 
Dalmatia, for instance, included Eastern Istria up to the River Arsa, all 
the islands of the Adriatic, all the present EalnB,tia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, 
Montenegro, up to the river Boyana, and Serbia, as far as the Morava. 
Dalmatia with its present frontiers only dates from 1815, v^ile 
in the Middle Ages she -A'as reduced to four or five maritime to^Nns and 
some islands. Dalmatia is, on the vv-hole, only the western coast of the 
Balkan i^eninsula, intimately bound up v/ith it not only by its geographical, 
geological, orographical, and in general its m.orpho logical structure, 
but also by ethnic laws, by its social atmosphere, community of race and 
political ideal. Istria and Dalmatia, v.'ith all its islands of the Adriatic^ 
are nothing but chains of the Dinaric Alps of v^ich the sea has invaded 



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the valleys „ In a word, Istria and Dalmatia constitute the Western 
littoral of t]ie Balkan Peninsula, its right lung. 

The Dinaric Alps do not in any way prevent the trade of the 
tvestern Ealtem littoral with its hinterland, as the history of Rome and 
the history of the Croats and Serbs prove. There still exist today 
Eorran roads which facilitate conmerce between the Balkan continent and 
the sea, roads well kno^jvn to Italian rr.erchants, \".ho rr.ake use of than to 
go to Bosnia to purchase cattle. Two railways connect Dalicatia with 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. It would have had others if Austria had not pre- 
vented their construction* 

The names of places in Balrr-atia prove with absolute certainty 
that that country belongs to the same geographic and ethnic groap as the 
rest of Balkans, because it vjould be difficult to find one per cent of 
names of a Latin origin, even on the islands furthest removed from the 
Dalmatian coast. Solely, the nam^es of the principal towns and certain of 
the islands were Italianized, or are of Illyrian, G-reek or Latin origin. 

Therefore, Zfei-liratia and Istria with all the isles and islets of 
the Fastern Adriatic, form, from every point of viev/, an indivisible 
whole, living with and from, the Balkan Peninsula. Any attem.pt to detach 
the least part, the le?.st fraanent would be a veritable riXLtilation. 

'CI. - R:^st^r i cal Argijmonts. 

Dalm.atia, by its fortunate geographical situation, has always 
av;aked the covetous desires of conquerors. The list of all the invasions 
it has had to sijffcr during the course of centuries would be a long one. 
The Rom,ans, under the pretext of punishing pirates, undertook its conquest 
from the end of •'•he 3rd century before Christ. 



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They had to carry on long and d'^.fficult wars and could only r'j.t 
the country under their yoke under the co^rmand of Tiberius^ in the j'^ear 
12 A. D. Velleius ^aterc.ilus states that the Dajrr.atians rebelled n:ore than 
two bundred times against the I^oinans. On the other hand, neither the 
Illyrians nor their successors the Jugoslavs ever undertook any war of 
conquest against Italy. 

After the Jugoslavs occupied the provinces of ancient Illyria 
and were definitely established there,, the western branch, the Croats, 
founded a State on the Adriatic littoral of which the centre ws.s the region 
which constitutes the present day Ealir.atia. Before the reign of the ■ 
Serbian dynasty of the Neiranyitch, during and even after their rule. Southern. 
Taliratia formed part of the Serbian State. The Croatian State was' con- 
stituted as a Kingdom and during the 12th century was attached to Hungary 
in the fonn of a personal union.- From, its foundation it struggled against 
the "Republic of Venice, '^-zhich pretended to domiinate the Dalmatian coast. 
In the struggle which lasted eight centuries, Venice played the part of 
the aggressor and the Jogoslavs never did anything Init defend themselves. 
Our people fought with tenacity for their country and their liberty. They 
only succumbed to the attacks of Venice when the Turks succeeded in destroy- 
ing their political independence. A striking exam.ple of what this struggle 
for the defense of their country was may be found in the history of Zara 
which, although conquered seventeen timaes, always shook off the yoke of 
Venice. 

The Venetian domination, which lasted as long as the Turkish 
dcTTiination in Serbia, was an epoch of intellectual and economic decadence 
for Talmatia, '^ile the free Ragusa was flourishing and, under the influence 



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of its prosperity, was able to create an admirable civilization, which 
caused it to be given the title of the "Jugoslav Athens" (the literature 
of Ragasa at this time is now the patrimony of the Serbo-Croatian litera- 
ture), the remainder of Dalmatia, dominated by Venice, offered the 
spectacle of the greatest misery, due to the negligence of the authorities. 
The French, who occupied it in 1806, did not find there a single public 
school and not a single mile of roads. Under the French domination 
(1805 to 1S15), when the first schools were founded and the first roads 
constructed, Dalmatia began to revive. But in falling, in 1815, under the 
domination of Austria, it ^nsls again abandoned for a century. 

The national and liberal m.ovement in Europe, due to the French 
B evolution, in the first half of the 19th century brought about an 
awakening of the nation's conscience among the Jugoslavs of Dalmatia, 
a conscience ^.-^lich had sl\2mbered during five centuries. of foreign domina- 
tion. The struggle for the use of the national language in the administra- 
tion and in the schools, for power in its commiones and in the provincial 
administration (a struggle directed against the Austrian system) began 
in the year 1660. in this struggle the Jugoslav national idea iwas victorious 
and the Austrian Government -jTas forced to admit the language which was 
spoken by nearly the entire population, both in the schools and in the 
admiinistration. The Italian bureaucracy which lost, in consequenwe, i'':s 
predominance on the Jugoslav masses, constituted the nucleus of the present 
Italian ■.•minority in the tovms and it is this minority of 3 per cent of the 
population which still pretends to dominate the other 97 per cent. 

Already forty years before the present world v/ar, the Jugoslavs, 
by their crrm efforts and contrary to the intentions of the Austrian Govern- 



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ment, beccms masters of all the autonomous institutions of the province. 
Of the 86 rranicipal councils existing in Daliratia 85 are Slav and one 
only^ that of Zara, is Italian. And even that one would have fallen into 
the hands of the Slavs if the Austrian Government had permitted the 
adoption of universal suffrage. Of the 41 deputies of the Tfelir.atian Diet 
6 only vivere Italian, all elected in the town of Zara on account of the 
old system of voting, while the remaining 35 were Serbo-Croats . All the 
deputies to the parliament of Vienna, elven in niaiibers, elected by universal 
sijffrage, were Serbo-Croats. An enormious Slav majority was elected to the 
Dalmatian Diet and did not cease to demand the union with the sister 
provinces of Croatia and Slavonia with which, in the Middle Ages, it had 
formed a powerful state. Austria-Hungary always opposed these legitimate 
aspirations (and that in complete accord with the Italian political party 
of Dalm.atia) . Austria-Hungary is now dead for good and the Dalmatian 
people hopes that with Austria has also died the iniqu.itous system it 
represented. 

II I. - Ethnic al, statistical a nd pol itical^arg'-'ments . 

The strongest argument in modern politics to decide to whom a 
country should belong is the ethnical one. Now, it wou'ld be difficult to 
find a country ethnically m.ore pure or m.ore homogeneous than DalT?.a.tia, 
The following are the statistical data: 

The official census of 1910 established a percentage of 95.19^ 
of inhabitants of the Serbc-CroPt language, 2.84 per cent of the Italian 
language and 0.75 per cent of other nationalities, that is to say 610,669 
Serbo-Croats and 18,028 Italians. 

In 1851, when the political power was exclusively in the hands of 
the Italians, the returns gave 378,676 Slavs and 14,645 Italians. In 1857 



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when the Goverraient was still favorable to the Italians and the latter 
were in povre-- in raliratia, the statistics gave 415,628 Slavs and 16,000 
Italians. The population speaking Italian therefore always remains in 
a proportion of 3 to 4 per cent. That it does not increase in the same 
proportion as the Jugoslavs is due to the fact that it is exclusively 
urban, beir^- composed of people belonging to the lower and middle class 
and not including any inhabitants in the country. 

One part of this population is formed of immigrants from Italy 
and the other of Italianized natives. There does not exist in Dalmatia 
an autochtonous Italian population. The immigrants are descendants of 
the Venetian functionaries who remained in Ife^lmatia in the 17th and 18th 
centuries, or of Austrian functionaries (originally from the Lombardo- 
Venetian Kingdom) who established themselves in the country during the 
first half of the 19th century, and finally small m.erchants, artizans, 
sailors or fisherman who arrived recently from Italy and who have formed 
new Italian colonies similar to those in Marseilles, Tunis and the Argentine. 
The remainder is canposed of Slavs, Italianized in the schools or adherents 
of the Italian political party, which quite recently still held power. 
Nevertheless all these Ife-liratians speaking the Italian language have always 
declared that they were not Italians but Slavs of Italian civilization. 
Until the end of the 19th century, they called thanselves "Slavo-Dalrr.atians", 
opposing this denomination to the national nam.es of Croats and Serbs. 
Their only popTilar political journal was printed exclusively in the Serbo- 
Croatian language and bore the name of "Pravi Dalira-tinac" (which means, 
in Serbo-Croatian, the ''true Dalmatian"). 

The ethnical character of the town of Zara itself does not differ 



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in any way froir. the ether ralmatian tovms. Za-ra was already Slav-' in the 
12th century. A chvcnlcle of the year 1177 states that the Pope i":exander 
ImI, \ihen he came to the to-,vn_, was accompanied in procession to the chvr-ch 
of St. Anastacia '.-diilo h^.trxis i^.jy}e_S7^j;^_i'ani:3page C.illor'am lingua 
slavonica.,.) xvere sung. (Farlati, HI, 3.) 

in its struggle against Venice it showed more resistance than v 
any of its sister towns. Th'-ugh its Slav population '<vas more than once 
exterm.ina,t6d or dispersed "by the Venetians,, the base nevertheless rem-a-ihed 
Slav, Today Zara is a little to\T:.i of fva:cticnaries, the last bulwark of 
an Italian burea-acracy in a purely Slav ccc.ntry. Having been under the 
Venetian and Austrian dom:.na'-,ions the capital of the province, it is the 
headquarters of the greatest number of Italianized functionaries, VirhO; 
with their families and their dependents, constitute the majority of the 
population. Sut this majority is limited to the urban part of Zara, to 
the town alone, withcut the suburbs or environs,, for if one considers 
the entire community of Zara it is found that the Slavs are in' a..prcpoi''t;iori 
of 3 to 1 Italian, and in the district of Zaia, this proportion is 7 to 1. 

As to the Dalm.atian islands the population is purely Slav and 
possesses highly developed national conscience. These are Slav to s-ich 
a point that in the Island of Lissa, for instance (the one the furthest from 
the crainland), oat of 10,041 one cannot even find one per cent of Italians. 

The Serbo-Croatian literat-ure had its roots principally in the 
islands which were rivals of Rag'asa in the poetic art. The most ancient 
inscriptions on stone in the Serbo-Croatian language are foiond at Starigrad 
(Cittavecchia), a little to';vn situated in the island of Hvar (Lesina). 
Inscriptions even in glagolite (old Slavonic) characters are found at 



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Sucharai on Lesina, 

During a struggle which has lasted a thousand years the 1^1- 
matians have kept the old-Slavonic language in the liturgy odP the Roman 
Catholic church where, even at Zara, as in the times of Pope Alexander 
III, the Slav hymns still are sung. 

Dalmatia is the purest Slav country and five centuries of for- 
eign domination could not denationalize it; its conscience of heing Slav 
is a more living force then in any region in the Balkans. The Dalmatian 
Diet, at the opening of each new session, has never failed to demand, in 
a special and solemn address, the union of Dalmatia with Croatia. Let 
Dalmatia be given the possibility of freely expressing its sentiments and 
it is more than certain that it will affirm, by an almost unanimous vote, 
her desire to be re^anited to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. 
IV « - Strategical Arguments. 

The Southern Slavs had not and will never have any desire for 
conquest. They are a peaceful people who only desire to live in peace with 
the whole world. 

Their geographical position, exposed as it is to covetous desires 
and to invasion, has forced them to become a warlike people, but only for 
the defence of their native soil. It is for this reason that they desire 
natural and sure frontiers, and they believe that the best and most natural 
of all frontiers is, without doubt, the sea. Thus they cannot tolerate the 
installation of any power on the eastern coast of the Adriatic or on the 
islands which forms an integral part of it. They consider such occupa- 
tions as stragetic bridgeheads, ma.de in view of new conquests at the expense 
of their territory. The islands of the eastern coast of the Adriatic iray be 



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regarded as fortresses - tut only as defensive fortresses and not as 
offensive fortresses. These islands, in the hands of a foreign power, 
would really be fortresses directed against our country. If such a 
state of things -vas created, our State would lose all its liberty of action, 
it would fall, by the very fact, under foreign domination, and would find 
itself in a perpetual state of insecurity. In the constant danger of being 
suddenly attached by an enemy army, it could not devote itself to the task 
of developing public e±acation and economic prosperity, but would be forced 
to concentrate all its energies on the creation of defenses against the 
menace of foreign invasion. Its force would be completely paralyzed and its 
sovereignity illusory. 

The assertion, according to which the possession of the eastern coast 
of the Adriatic, or at least some of the islands, would be necessary for 
Italy to safeguard her western coast from the danger of a pretended aggression 
on our part, has no basis on fact. History teaches us that, in this region, 
the movement of conquest has always gone from the western tov/ard the eastern 
coast (Soman and Venetian invasions) and never in the contrary direction. 
Italjr w'ss attacked and conquered, by sea, by adversaries coming from the 
Pouth (the Carthagenians and Arabs) or coming from the ^%st (Spaniards), but 
never from the l^st. If the eastern littoral of the Adriatic is better 
provided with ports and gulfo, the western coast, is richer in population and 
natural resoxorces which are the basis of all m.ilitary and political force. 
It is for this reason vhat the eastern coast has never been able to dominate 
the western coast, while the latter has, on several occasions, conquered the 
eastern coast, not with a defensive aim but with the well-determined inten- 
tion of establishing its domination on the Ralkan Peninsula. It was tbuo 



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that the Earians acted in ancient times, and, in a ir.ore recent epoch, the- 
Venetians; it is still what those desire to realize who today claim for Italy 
a part of the eastern littoral and invoke the necessity of protecting ^■h3 
Italian coast. 

The liberty of the Adriatic Sea will only he assured when opposite 
a rich and populous Italy a State is found on the eastern side capable of 
establishing eqiiiiibriuro. And since the predominance in men and natural 
riches will always be on the side of Italy, inistress of the fertile and popu- 
lous valley of the Po, the strategic advantage to our state, resulting from 
the possession of the coast which naturally belongs to it in the basin of 
the Adriatic, should be all the more assured to us. 

So long as these elements of maritime supremacy remain separate, the 
liberty of navigation will be guaranteed to all nations. Hit the day when 
Italy will add the strategic factor to her economic preponderance, by install- 
ing herself on the eastern coast, the Adriatic sea will at once become an 
Italian lake. 

V. - Economic Argumen ts > 
The annej<ation of Talmatia by a foreign State would certainly entail 
for it an economic decadence and would create an incurable wound in the organ- 
ization of our State. The eastern coast, rocky and poor, does not possess the 
conditions for an independent econox-nic life. Its natural function is to be 
the outlet of the rich plains of the valleys of the Danube, the Save, the 
Bosna and the Vx)rava to the sea, and it is from these countries that it ought 
to live. Separated from the re?t of o'>jjr country Dalmatia could not lead a 
normal life, as is demonstrated by the five centuries of her history under the 
Venetian and Austrian dominations^ 



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The principal agricultioral products of the eastern coast of the 
Adriatic are \vine and oil, which were exported to Austria, to Hungary and 
to Bosnia. Foreign competition^ which will have no limits, would cause such 
a depreciation of these products that the Dalmatians would have no means of 
proc\ir-ing bread and other food-stuffs of prime necessity. The best proof 
of this affirmation lies in the terrible consequences resulting from a 
clause in the Italo-Austrian treaty of commerce which permitted the free im- 
portation of the mnes of Italy into Austria- Hungary and which brought about 
the economic ruin of Dalmatia. Already in the Middle Ages the influence of 
the close relations between Dalmatia and its hinterland made themselves 
felt. Serbian conmerce, at that epoch, was directed in the greater part 
toward Balm.atia, 

On the contrary, in our State, Dalm.atia would sell her produce at 
advantageous prices and would bioy foodstiaffs of prim.e necessity cheaper 
than elsewhere, the importations and exportations being naturally and justly 
balanced. 

Under foreign domination the ports of Palmatla could not pretend to 
become ports of transit for the commerce mth the hinterland. On the contrary, 
if they belonged to our State, they would undergo a great development as ports 
of exportation for the natural riches of the adjacent Jugoslav countries, 

V T ■ - Concli I S ion. 
All thece reasons m.ilitate in favor of the incorporation of lEilmatia 
in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. But the strongest of all, 
is the firm, decided and resolute will of the Dalmatian people to be reunited 
vrith its national State and the rigiht which our nation possesses to its 
territorial integrity. A solution of the Dalm.atian question which would be 
contrary to the will of the population, would inevitably plant the germs of 
new conflicts. 



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